In the Saugerties Public Library, at the far end of the room, hidden behind the shelves, there is a reading alcove with some wooden chairs gathered around a fireplace with a tiled mantle. The tiles, with their sculpted relief in the historic Arts and Crafts style, illustrate what is probably the most famous fable to come out of the Hudson Valley—Washington Irving's Rip Van Winkle. Here, in a series of images, we find the familiar tale of a henpecked husband, who, looking for peace of mind, hiked with his dog, Wolf, and his fowling-piece to the mountain source of the Kaaterskill. Once there, he met the short, stout ghosts of Henry Hudson and his men and accepted an evening drink that took 20 years to sleep off.

Irving was our nation's first internationally acclaimed author and Rip was his most popular character, one who became as well known from the numerous theatrical performances of his tale as from Irving's writing. As it was Rip's story that brought the Hudson Valley to the attention of the world, references to Rip Van Winkle are ubiquitous in this area—but Saugerties may have a unique claim to this character. Is it possible that Saugerties was Rip's hometown?

Rip Van Winkle was first presented to the public in May 1819 in the first installment of The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon Gent. This was during the Romantic movement in art and philosophy, which combined a reverence for nature with a fascination for the supernatural. The Catskill Mountains were a preserved area of rugged wildness in close proximity to the centers of population in New York and Albany, and therefore they were becoming an attraction for the Romantic tourist, who wanted to get back to nature and who valued legend and tradition. With his writing, Irving had supplied the second element, and the legend of Rip Van Winkle was seized on by the Catskill tourist industry, perhaps the first such industry in our country's history. In 1823, the Catskill Mountain House, the first resort hotel in the US, was constructed on top of the cliff from which the Kaaterskill descends, and, as historian John Thorn recently pointed out in an article in the Saugerties Times, by 1826 there was a building claiming to be the Rip Van Winkle House along the road to the hotel. Although Rip is a fictional character, it seems that this fact was soon forgotten and some longtime residents began to claim they had known him.

As the 19th century progressed, Rip continued to be a valued Catskill tourist attraction and many local towns vied with each other claiming to be Rip's hometown. The most adamant claimants were Catskill, Kingston, Stone Ridge, and Palenville. By the 20th century, Rip's name seemed to be on everything from hotels to rocking chairs and a Rip Van Winkle theme park was built on the plateau above Kaaterskill Clove next to the lake, which is the source of the Kaaterskill. Here, among 18th century cottage architecture, complete with appropriately dressed women engaged in colonial crafts, a visitor could shake hands with Rip himself (or at least an actor playing the part). But the only road leading from the valley to the summit of the plateau lead through Palenville and here tourists would first be greeted by a sign making it clear that Palenville was the home of Rip Van Winkle. It seemed that every town except Saugerties was claiming Rip. (Even today, on the Palenville website we are informed that Washington Irving envisioned Rip living in Palenville because Irving lived there when he wrote the story. On a Catskill website designed for tourists an alternative claim is found that it was Irving's visit to Catskill that inspired him to write the story.) 

Irving was born in 1783, lived in New York City, and occasionally spent time on the Passaic River in New Jersey and just up the Hudson from New York in the old Dutch village of Sleepy Hollow. His first view of the Catskill Mountains was from the deck of a sloop on his way up the river. On at least two occasions in 1802 he sailed from his home in New York to Albany to visit his sisters Nancy and Kitty, and again in 1803 he sailed up the Hudson to Canada with his employer, Judge Hoffman. It seems that before 1819, when Rip Van Winkle was published, the only time that Irving had a chance to explore the Catskill region on foot was for one week in August in 1812, when he was a guest of John Robert Livingston at his mansion on the east bank of the Hudson at Barrytown, across the river from Kingston. Irving was 29 at the time and took advantage of his stay to make day trips, with some of the young Livingston women as companions. The Livingstons were wealthy landowners who lived in a series of mansions along the east bank of the Hudson, where, from their spacious lawns, they could view their land holdings on the west bank—which included what is now Saugerties, Woodstock, and much of the Catskill Mountains. John Robert was the younger brother of Robert R. Livingston, who lived in Claremont, the principal estate, which lies about seven miles north of Barrytown, directly across the river from Saugerties.

In his The Catskills: From Wilderness to Woodstock, historian Alf Evers states that during this stay Irving got his only up close view of the Catskills when he saw Overlook Mountain, in what is now Woodstock. To accomplish this it was most likely that Irving would have taken a carriage to Claremont, where the Livingstons had a ferry that regularly crossed over the river to Saugerties. On the west side, the Livingstons had built a road from the riverbank to their sawmill in Woodstock over which logs were brought to the river. Irving could have taken a carriage up the road to the sawmill within view of Overlook Mountain. Although Woodstock at the time was only a sawmill and some workers' huts, in Saugerties Irving would have found farms and, clustered around the Esopus where it empties into the Hudson, rows of brick houses inhabited by people who spoke a combination of Dutch and English like the inhabitants of Irving's beloved Sleepy Hollow. And, like the residents of Sleepy Hollow, they were steeped in ancient lore and a belief in witchcraft.

Sometime between 1815 and 1819, Irving was living with his Sister Sara Van Wart in Birmingham, England. Because of the bankruptcy of the family business, Irving had decided to try and make a living as a writer but, because of his depressed state of mind, he had written almost nothing for most of a year. At the urging of Walter Scott, he had been studying German folk legends and he longed to create a similar folk history for his home country. One evening, Washington was walking with his sister's husband, Henry, and they were reminiscing about their visits to Sleepy Hollow. Sparked by the memory of happier days, Washington retired to his room early and began to write.

That night he made use of two German folk stories. One was about the Emperor Charles the Great, who disappeared with his army into a cleft in a mountain, where they were condemned to stay until doomsday. It was said that when claps of thunder were heard in the mountain it was the emperor making an appearance. Irving had been reading a description of Kaaterskill Clove written by Samuel Mitchill, and he thought of replanting the story in this New World location, substituting Henry Hudson and his men for the emperor and his army. The second story was about Peter Klaus, a goatherd who followed his goats into a cleft in a mountain, where he discovered some otherworldly bowlers. The bowlers gave him a drink of wine that caused him to sleep for 20 years. In Irving's imagination, Peter Klaus became Rip and the bowlers became Hudson's men, complete with a means of creating thunder by striking their bowling pins. All that was left was to give Rip a suitable colonial Dutch village.

Of course, when creating Rip's home Irving made use of images of Sleepy Hollow, which he had been recollecting that evening. He described the town as being founded by Dutch settlers during the early rule of Peter Stuyvesant (1645-64) with the oldest houses being made of yellow brick brought from Holland.

Sleepy Hollow was settled in 1645 and does have yellow-brick houses. Saugerties was settled in 1677 during the rule of the English governor Andros and the oldest Dutch houses are made of fieldstone, not brick. But, it is the oldest town near the foot of the mountain where the story takes place and it was founded by Dutch as well as English settlers. Irving also describes the village as seen from the river, just below the mountains; its "shingled-roofs gleam among the trees, just where the blue tints of the upland melt away into the fresh green of the nearer landscape." This is not a description of Sleepy Hollow but  of Saugerties as seen from the grassy riverside slope of the Claremont estate. Saugerties occupies the ridge just above the river, which would appear to be at the foot of the mountains from this vantage point. It seems that just as Irving amalgamated German legends within this new landscape, he fused Sleepy Hollow and Saugerties into one village.

Palenville is sited at the foot of the mountain from which the Kaaterskill flows, as is the town described in the story, but it did not exist in the late 1700s when the story took place, and it cannot be seen from the river. Even in the early 1800s, all that stood there were two mills and the cabins of the workers who operated them, and as we have seen, Irving was living in England when he wrote the story, not in Palenville as claimed. Stone Ridge, at over 28 miles, and Kingston, at over 20, are just too far from Kaaterskill Clove to be thought of as within walking distance, and can stake their claims only by disputing the location of Rip's nap. Catskill is a colonial town founded in 1678 on the east bank of the Hudson about 9.5 miles from the base of the mountain, which would have been within walking distance for Rip, but Irving is not known to have visited Catskill before he wrote the account. Saugerties is actually a year older than Catskill and a half-mile closer to the clove, making it the closest colonial town, and as we have seen, it is likely that Irving did visit Saugerties before he wrote the story. Therefore, in answer to our question, yes, it is likely that Saugerties was Rip's hometown.